John 1:19-34 "The One Who Was Not" Scott Hoezee

Last Sunday morning we pondered the only story in any of the four gospels that tells us something about the life of Jesus between his birth and his baptism. We noted then how remarkable it is that Jesus grew up in quiet obscurity and remained an obscure figure for just about the entire span of his life. Even in John 1, John the Baptist tells the religious authorities that the key person in God's plan was "one you do not know." Ah, but they most certainly did know John! Why was that? Why did the forerunner to the Messiah become more famous than the Messiah himself? Because that is exactly what happened.

As we have noted together before, John was easily the most famous preacher of his generation. The ancient secular historian Josephus, whose historical records are vital sources of information to scholars around the world, once wrote that in his estimation, this man John was a vastly more important and impressive figure than his cousin known as Jesus. Even years after Jesus' death and resurrection, the apostles visited the city of Ephesus to proclaim the gospel. They ran across a large church that called itself "The First Church of John the Baptizer." The members of this congregation had all been baptized into the name of John. When the apostles inquired if they had been baptized into also the name of Jesus, the people replied, "Who's that? Never heard of him." Years earlier it was John, not Jesus, who got King Herod's attention. So he arrested and eventually executed John. But once Jesus began to make a bit of a stir himself, Herod's first reaction was to say, "That must be John again! He's back from the dead!"

Most scholars believe that the Gospel of John as written by John the apostle was the last one of the four gospels to be composed. By the time Saint John got around to writing all this down for us, it was already late in the first century, long after Peter and Paul had been killed and likely well after the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke had been circulated, too. But even that late in the game, it is glaringly obvious from John's gospel that in many places John the Baptist was still more famous than Jesus.

Unlike the other three gospels, John opens his book with a soaring introduction which is its own kind of poem or hymn. But early on in his song, John has to interrupt himself. Just imagine it this way: suppose at some point last month we had been singing the carol "Joy to the World!" "Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king!" But what would you have thought if at that point I had waved my arms, made Ken stop playing the organ, and then said, "OK, everyone, now remember, we're not singing about John the Baptist here! Got it? Good, let's go on. 'Let every heart prepare him room . . .'"

That would have been weird, right? But that's what John does. He is crooning away about the Word of God that was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made. This Word was the light of men and it shines in the darkness. But then he stops and says, "But I'm not singing about John the Baptist! He was not the light I'm talking about!" Apparently the Apostle John had to say that or else there would still have been people, even that late in the first century, who would have thought John the Baptist was the Light of the world.

In fact, as commentator Don Juel pointed out, in this chapter John the Baptist becomes the man who is not. He is not the light. He is not the Christ. He is not Elijah. He is not the final Prophet. He is not worthy to untie the true One's sandals. He is not the one to baptize with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist had a kind of reverse resumé. Typically on a resumé you list all the thing that you are, all the things you have done and accomplished. But John had a resumé that was like a photographic negative: before he could say who he was and what he had come to do, he had to go on and on to say who he was not and what his work would not be about!

But suppose we want to be more positive. What did John the Baptist come to do? He came to bear witness. Today we celebrate Epiphany. An epiphany is a revelation, the unveiling of something. It's the kind of thing that in cartoons can sometimes be depicted by a light bulb going off in someone's head. *DING!* Something comes together and gels in your mind for the first time. The light bulb goes off and a new idea occurs to you. You make some connections you hadn't seen before. At times, the new idea is so grand that we Christian people credit no less than the Holy Spirit for revealing this new epiphany of knowledge to us.

In the tradition of the Church, Epiphany is the revealing of Jesus as God's Christ, as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But as the Apostle John makes clear here in John 1, this Epiphany of Jesus at the Jordan River would not have happened if John the Baptist had not been there to bear witness to it. Like the birth and then also the first nearly thirty years of Jesus' life, his Epiphany ended up being a quiet, almost a hidden, event. The crowds didn't see it. When Jesus was baptized, he was a just another moist face in the crowd. Only John saw it. Only he could give testimony to it. That appears to have been the main reason he came.

Yes, John's message of repentance prepared the people, as we thought about on the Second Sunday in Advent last month. The world had to be ready for Jesus as God's Christ and the way you get ready for that One's advent is by getting serious about your own need to be forgiven for your sins. But never did John the Baptist himself give a clearer rationale for his own work than what we get in verse 31: "The reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel."

Isn't that remarkable!? All of John's crazy shenanigans; all that shouting and ranting and raving and fire-and-brimstone preaching; all that spectacle of camel's hair clothing and the funny diet of grasshoppers dipped in honey; all those countless baptisms in the Jordan's muddy waters--all of it was mainly aimed at that one moment when John would point his finger and bear witness to the One everybody had been waiting for. Who knows precisely when it was that John the Baptist realized this was his purpose in life. But at some point it became clear to him that he had to start this ministry of baptism so that when God's Christ appeared, he would be there to tell the world about it.

But did you notice one other detail in what was read this morning? We already noted that in verse 26 John told the religious authorities that there was somebody in their midst, "one you do not know," who was the key one to watch for. But as you read on in these verses, it becomes clear that John did not know who it was either. In verse 31, after for the first time identifying Jesus as the Lamb of God, John admits, "I myself did not know him."

John and Jesus did know each other, of course. They were cousins. Their mothers were close to each other. Luke tells us that when Mary was bursting with news that she could not plausibly tell anyone else about, she made a beeline for Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother, who had plenty of news of her own to share. So we have to assume that John and Jesus knew each growing up. They were about the same age, after all, and so surely played together as children at family get-togethers. Maybe they grew apart a bit as they became adults, as often happens with cousins, but even in those later years they may well have had some measure of contact with each other.

They knew each other, but according to John 1:31, John did not realize that his cousin was The One. Did he suspect it? We don't know. Did he ever entertain the idea, even for a moment? We don't know. What we do know is that it was only after John baptized his cousin Jesus and saw the Holy Spirit descend on him that he knew definitively who his cousin had been all along, who he was at that very moment, and what he would do for the world. And when he saw it, when the pieces of the puzzle finally came together in John's mind, when the light bulb went off and the epiphany came, he bore witness, he gave the testimony he had been born to bear. He may have been surprised, he may have been shocked, he may have even had some doubts in the back of his mind (and certainly some time later he would have very big doubts as to whether he had gotten it right or not). But the point for now is that when he saw that Spirit descend on Jesus (of all people!), he gave the world this epiphany.

John spent a good deal of his time making clear to people what and who he was not. Oddly enough, when he finally got around to being more positive by telling people what he in fact was, that did not generate much press. The things he was not were all very impressive. Had he been any one of those things, waves of excitement would have washed over people everywhere. But as it turned out, he was just a witness, just a sideline player.

The Greek word is a form of the word martyr, which means witness and has also gone on to mean in English anyone who dies on account of testifying to his or her faith. That fate would come to John as the world's Epiphany martyr, too. But the point is that the things John had to deny about himself were more interesting to most people's mind than the one thing he did turn out to be: a simple witness, a finger-pointer, one who deflected the spotlight from himself in order to throw it onto someone else.

That's the way it always goes in life. If you tell me you can arrange to have me meet the President of the United States, you will get my attention. If you tell me you can arrange to have me meet the guy who used to dry clean the President's suits in the White House laundry, my enthusiasm will be, shall we say, a tad less. If you tell me that you were once a member of Count Bassie's orchestra, I will be interested to hear more. If you tell me you were the one who opened the curtain when Count Bassie played at the old Civic Auditorium, I will have heard about all there is to hear. So also in this chapter: If John had been able to affirm any of the questions asked about him, people would have gone through the roof (and those who did go through the roof over John did so by making him into the Messiah after all). But when John admitted he was only a witness, no one applauded.

John the Baptist went on to become the most famous preacher of his generation because people pinned false hopes on him. They were not content to let him be only a witness. He was so impressive a figure, people wanted to believe he had more going for him than just a testimony-giver, just a finger-pointer. But apparently God knows the value of a good witness. If it were not for John, we would have no Epiphany to celebrate today. But because of what John said, we have not only Epiphany we have the enduring testimony to the fact that Jesus was no less than the Son of God who came as the sacrificial Lamb, taking away the sin of the world.

We have good reason to be thankful for John. But on this Epiphany Sunday, I wonder if we really take his example to heart. How many of us are content to be the one who was not? If we are honest, most of us prefer to have an identity and to make a name for ourselves as something other than "just" being a witness to the gospel. Before he ascended into heaven after his resurrection, Jesus told the disciples (and by the Spirit tells now also us), "You are my witnesses, my martyrs, to tell the world the gospel." This is to be our identity. We are here to bear witness, to give testimony, to tell the world what we believe is true about Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of all people.

But how often does that identity loom large on your mind? Many of us have, at one time or another, worked hard on polishing up a good looking resumé or C.V. to show to potential employers and others. But have we ever pondered, even briefly, trying to find a way to include on that resumé something that would tie in with our work as witnesses? Have we ever tumbled to the thought that our Christian identity as bearers of the gospel's testimony is important enough that it could get onto that resumé somehow?

You might be thinking that this is easy for me to say this seeing as I cannot make a resumé about Scott Hoezee without having my identity as a preacher on their prominently. That's true. But I am willing to confess that aside from that obvious fact about myself, I've not wondered if maybe there were other ways to make my Christian identity plain on such a document. Even under typical resumé headings like "Hobbies" and "Other Interests," I've not thought to put anything on there about coming to worship regularly or anything else that might point to my identity as a gospel witness.

Maybe it seems like I am just being a bit over-the-top or silly in even suggesting this. And I will admit that I am Reformed enough that I would not want to claim there is such a thing as a "Christian resumé" over against a secular one. We exercise our Christian identity and service to God's world when we do good work as lawyers, plumbers, teachers, mechanics, and bus drivers. Those are all holy things to do whether or not we call attention to them in some overtly theological way. But the point is that probably many of us do spend far more time pondering these other roles in life than we ever spend wondering just how it is that we are first of all gospel witnesses for the Son of God.

The simple, gospel fact of the matter is that were it not for John's willingness to see himself first and foremost as a witness--as the one who was not the star of the show--we would have no Epiphany to mark today. God's mysterious way of saving us through Christ means that his ways are quiet ways, his kingdom is a hidden reality, and his Son will not burst onto the average person's awareness unless there is first someone else to point Jesus out to that person. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world needs willing witnesses today no less than on that long ago day when Jesus quietly ambled up to the Jordan River. Even his own cousin did not at first realize who Jesus really was. But give John credit: once he saw what he did, once that light bulb went off in his mind, he had the courage to say what he believed.

As we begin 2004 today, we enter a new year in which we will have any number of opportunities to bear witness to the hope that is in us. Sometimes we bear witness best by bearing it quietly, simply doing our work in an above-board and honest fashion and in ways that glorify God through the smart exercise of the gifts he has given us. Other times we bear witness by standing up for what is right even when the pressure is on to go along with the crowd by letting some wrong slip past us. But at still other times we need to bear witness by choosing church, worship, and kingdom service over other things that we are invited to do. And when we make such choices, we bear witness by giving an account of why we believe what we do, why we live how we do, and of who Jesus is to us.

However we do it, though, in word, deed, lifestyle, the idea is that we put the modest identity of being a martyr, a witness, at the top of our self-identity. John was the man who was not, and what he did end up being didn't seem impressive. But it was. It still is. Because the truth is, Epiphany is not an event that happened just once long ago and that never needs repeating. People all around us, and certainly the larger world, need an ongoing Epiphany, an ongoing unveiling of who the Son of God is. Jesus said, "You are my witnesses." This is who we are. May God give us the courage to stop trying to be something else. Amen.